The success of a diagnostic or therapeutic strategy is critically dependent on its specificity. Therapies for infectious diseases achieve high specificity because they target metabolic pathways that differ between the pathogen and the host. The applicability of this concept to cancer, however, has been limited by the difficulty in defining metabolic features that are specific to tumor cells. As a result, current cancer therapeutic agents have largely been found through empiric screening programs rather than through rational design.
Knowledge of the genetic alterations that drive neoplasia has revolutionized cancer research over the past two decades (Stillman, 1994). Theoretically, this knowledge provides a large number of potential diagnostic and therapeutic targets in the form of mutant oncoproteins in the resultant tumors. In general, however, it has not been clear how to use such knowledge to design new diagnostic and therapeutic strategies (Karp, 1995). Thus, there is a need in the art for new diagnostic and therapeutic strategies for combatting cancers.